I’m reading “The Age of Anxiety” by W.H. Auden

For some strange reason I am enjoying this book-long long poem very much. Perhaps it suits my melancholic nature. Perhaps it’s because I like the cover, or that I picked it off the New Books shelf at my library. I like that it’s a new “old” book. I like the introduction and the notes at the back of the book. And since there’s still no shortage of anxiety, it seems now-ish to me. Perhaps it’s because he writes mostly in Anglo-Saxon alliterative verse – I’ve decided that I want to write a book in alliterative verse now too!! It reminds me of listening to Seamus Heaney’s CD of his translation of Beowulf.

For example this sort of thing tickles my fancy –

Long-legged ladies with little-legged dogs
Lolled with their lovers by lapsing brooks….
…
Where country curates in cold bedrooms
Dreamed of deaneries til at day-break
The rector’s rooks with relish described
Their stinted station.

2 comments

My next post will be a (mostly) non-anxious one concerning that Whole Mind book dear Issy.Perhaps I’ll alternate bw. anxious and non-anxious posts 🙂 Thanks for posting the Very First comment to my new blog!! xx